Course Descriptions

ENG 390 - Word Art

Instructor
Churchill

We live in a highly visual culture.  To be literate, we need to read and interpret words, images and the interplay between them, both in print and online.  This course examines print and digital texts that combine words and images.  We will study some of the most complex and subtle word/image texts, focusing on Japanese masters and genres such as haiku, political woodblock prints, manga, and anime.  Word-Art is a hybrid course: a study of words and images, a combination of critical and creative writing, and an investigation into print and digital forms.

The Spring 2018 course will be interlinked with Professor Tyler Starr’s ART 331 - Printmaking - Japan . Students must sign up for both courses and will receive 2 course credits. Students will create their own books using paper from Japan and create interactive digital facsimiles.  While ostensibly, ENG 390 will emphasize writing and digital publication, and ART 331 will focus on images and printmaking, the pairing of the two courses will deconstruct word/image, print/digital, and East/West binaries through multimedia investigations that require interdisciplinary approaches and encourage cross-fertilization.

Fulfills the Innovation requirement in the English major.
Counts towards the East Asian Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENG 391 - Literary Criticism

Analytic and comparative reading of major critical texts.

Satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives requirement.
Satisfies the Diversity requirement in the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

 

ENG 393 - Film Genres

Genre is both a theoretical concept useful in film analysis and a function of  film  industry’s market forces. For Spring 2019, the genres will include Romantic Comedy, The War Film, Psychological Thriller, and (based on student choice) either Film Noir or Sci-Fi.  In each case we will examine the genre’s roots and legacies, common themes, narrative structures, and visual styles.

Students will be invited to satisfy requirements by making short movies, writing papers, participating in a writers’ bullpen and/or creating longer individual screenplays.

Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Fulfills a requirement in the Film & Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.

ENG 394 - Nationalism, Race, and Empire

British imperialism permeated the British literary tradition much as it did the globe. Using the lens of postcolonial theory we will examine the fictions and critiques of empire constructed in and through selected texts from the eighteenth century through the present in an attempt to unravel the cultural function of these powerful fictions. Our investigations will be informed by contemporary public discourse about slavery, imperialism, and nationalism, so that we can better grasp the literary and socio-political context of British colonialism and its after-effects. 

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Cultural Production and Expressions category).
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Fulfills the Diversity requirement of the English major.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 395 - Independent Study in Literature

ENG 396 - Independent Study in Writing

ENG 397 - Independent Study

ENG 401 - Creative Writing Seminar: Literary Journalism

Just the facts? Journalism. Presenting the facts in the form of a story, with an engaging plot, well developed characters, descriptive color, and inclusion of the author’s voice? Creative nonfiction. This creative writing seminar combines the essential elements of creative nonfiction with the fruits of journalistic research and reportage-in both the library and the field, through interviewing. 

Students will define appropriate projects almost immediately and set about researching them under the guidance of the instructor and other professionals. The research will culminate in a piece of reported creative nonfiction, prepared for publication, ranging from 6000 to 7000 words. Weekly meetings will be devoted to discussing a wide array of reading in the genre, presenting research to the class, and revising drafts in a workshop setting.  Readings will include works by such writers as Truman Capote, John McPhee, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Orlean, Thomas Mallon, Atul Gawande, Francine Prose, and many others.

Prerequisites & Notes
Ideally, students who enroll will have taken a creative writing course at the 200 level or higher.

ENG 404 - Seminar: Writing the “Sexy”* Novella

This course offers students in any major at Davidson College an opportunity to realize their dream of writing the first strong draft of a novella that has the potential to be developed into a novel.  Before the writing begins, students will read and dissect two novellas, each selected from a list of prize-winning books.  These selections are intended to inspire the student-writer’s creativity.  By the fourth week, writing begins in earnest with short exercises produced in and out of class.  By the end of the term, each writer would have produced at least 60 pages of a compelling story.  Writers should be prepared to write often, discuss their work in the seminar, and be open to critiques that are intended to help them create “sexy” fiction.

*”Sexy” means provocative, intriguing, inspiring, and/or compelling. It does not refer to pornographic butit can encompass the erotic.

ENG 406 - Digital Design Seminar

The digital revolution has opened up humanities scholarship to new modes of producing and disseminating knowledge, resulting in the emergence of a new field: Digital Humanities. This team-taught seminar will emphasize four pillars of Digital Humanities: 1) design, 2) collaboration, 3) inclusivity, and 4) networks. You will design your own humanities research projects from initial conception to online publication via a WordPress website hosted in Davidson Domains. You will learn project design strategies and apply principles of UX-design in order to make your scholarship accessible, interactive, and immersive. You will collaborate with classmates and other experts, pooling your knowledge and working together to redress critical biases and exclusions in the humanities. And you will use social media to network, connect with scholars in the field, and cultivate an audience for your project. In the process, you will develop digital dexterity and skills in research, writing, design, teamwork, networking, and project management-skills that are not only fundamental to digital humanities, but also sought after by employers outside academia.

Satisfies a major requirement in English.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Digital Studies.

ENG 409 - Television: Queer Representations (=GSS 401)

With its roots in the gendered domestic suburban household, television has a longstanding investment in questions of gender and sexuality.  Pushing back against the assumption that LGBTQ characters did not appear on our screens in a sustained way until the 1980s, this course will investigate how TV representation of queer life have changed with the evolution of the medium since the 1950s.  Recent work in the field of queer TV studies has unearthed queer characters from previously invisible archives, charted changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity in broadcast programming, and documented the organizational strategies  employed by television narrative that disclose and contain expressions of non-normative sexualities. Indeed, in one of the foundational texts on queer TV, Lynne Joyrich argues that “U.S. television does not simply reflect an already closeted sexuality but actually helps organize sexuality as closeted.” Extending Joyrich’s line of reasoning, we will seek to understand the dynamics of visibility and invisibility that structure representations of televised queerness. How might we understand the contemporary series Transparent alongside or against the representation of a trans character on All in the Family (1975)? Why might The New Normal, a seemingly positive portrayal of new kinship structures, have failed as a series in 2013? Even as we watch the problematic take on villainous lesbian characters in the Angie Dickinson vehicle, Police Woman (“Flowers of Evil,” 1974), we will move beyond diagnoses and critiques of “bad” versus “good” queer representations to acknowledge the pleasures that may attend the viewing of even ideologically corrupt programming. Which shows and episodes became lightening rods for desire despite their failure to produce fully realized queer characters? And what genealogy (or genealogies) of queer TV might take us from the groundbreaking episodes of Ellen (“The Puppy Episode”) and Roseanne (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) in the 1990s to the moment at which a Vanity Fair cover declared that with “Gay-per-view TV” shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, prime time had “come out” (2003)? As we historicize such developments, we will consider the contributions of writer-producers and series creators such as Alan Ball and Ryan Murphy, and analyze a variety of programs from “quality television” to animation, from the sit-com to reality TV, and from sci-fi to the game show.

Satisfies a major requirement in English.
Satisfies a minor requirement in English.
Fulfills the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Film and Media Studies.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality and Community requirement.

ENG 415 - Spring 2020 Seminar Topic- Poetics of Relation: James Baldwin (=AFR 304)

Poetics of Relation: James Baldwin
Instructor
Flanagan 

Poetics of Relation: James Baldwin - One of the country’s most important 20th century essayists, fiction writers, and playwrights, James Baldwin penetrated the consciousness of America with his eloquent and insightful writing. His words are a living legacy of the ways in which African Americans and members of LGBT communities have continued to prevail in the presence of unrelenting antipathy. His friend, Amiri Baraka, said of him: “This man traveled the earth like its biographer. He reported, criticized, made beautiful, analyzed, cajoled, lyricized, attacked, sang, made us think, made us better, made us consciously human or perhaps more acidly prehuman.”

Poetics of Relation is the rubric for a seminar in which students analyze relations between prominent writers– many of African descent–and specific cultures, landscapes or historical moments. Previous iterations of this seminar have focused on writings by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Derek Walcott, Vidia Naipaul, Wole Soyinka, and August Wilson.

In addition to close, analytical readings, substantive class discussions, oral presentations and  weekly one-two page MOUs, seminar participants will write a major essay which will be added to the existing Poetics of Relations digital site.

Cross-listed as AFR: 303 in Africana Studies  for Major Thinkers credit
Satisfies a requirement in Africana Studies and Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies Literary and Cultural Representations track major requirement.
Satisfies English major requirement.
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement. 
Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.

ENG 421 - Writing the Self

This seminar looks at the ways that writers, often from marginalized communities, used “non-literary” forms such as letters, diaries or notebooks as a form of expression when traditional avenues of publication or literary recognition were not available to them. In addition to looking at texts from various literary traditions we will also examine the ways that contemporary writers have returned to these forms, including a consideration of blogs and social media as part of the contemporary expression of these forms.

SPRING 2018
Instructor: S. Campbell

Looking into the past to make sense of the present pervades non-fiction writing.  This type of reflection emerges in a variety of forms and lengths, including the brief personal memoir, the podcast, and the multi-volume autobiography.  Whereas autobiography explores large pieces of a life in an effort to explain a whole person, the memoir uses a narrow focus, what William Zinsser terms a “window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition” (136).  We will read memoirs that provide windows into the childhoods and adulthoods of people of varied classes, ethnicities, and experiences.  Students will approach the genre both critically and creatively, exploring what it means and can mean to write the self.

ENG 430 - Italo Calvino and Invention

A hybrid course focusing upon the works of Italo Calvino and Postmodernism, this seminar will offer scholars and writers the opportunity to study “invention” as both an idea and a practice.

Satisfies a major requirement in English.
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory major.
Satisifes a minor requirement in English.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Global Literary Theory.

ENG 452 - Seminar: Performing Shakespeare/Radio Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s London, audience members referred not to “watching” or “seeing” a play, but to “hearing” it.

“Radio Shakespeare” is a new incarnation of English 452, “Performing Shakespeare.”  The course will culminate in three full-length radio performances of The Merchant of Venice before live audiences.  A fourth performance, a Sunday matinee on the order of a staged reading, may occur at the Zimmermanns’ Renaissance villa, Pian del Pino.  One of the audio performances will be broadcast live on WDAV.  Post-production, engineers will assemble an immortal podcast combining the strongest elements of the three recorded performances into one whole.

ENG 453 - Literary Alchemy

What happens when a literary genius takes hold of a mere suggestion and transforms it into literary gold?  By what process of imagination does a snippet of news in The New York Times become Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or spawn Susan Orleans’s orchid thief, John Laroche, who reemerges as played by Chris Cooper in Spike Jonze’s conversion of The Orchid Thief into a film about the very matter of Adaptation?  How does Miss Kay grow from what Muriel Spark calls “the seeds of the future Miss Jean Brodie” into that fully formed character in her prime?  What happens when Shakespeare takes hold of a lackluster little narrative by Giraldi Cinthio, turns it on its ear, and produces Othello out of base metal?  Or when George Saunders spins Lincoln in the Bardo out of a line of history that concerns Abraham Lincoln’s visit to his son’s tomb?  This seminar will explore the literary imagination by focusing on such transformations into nonfiction, fiction, drama, and film-some from humble origins, others from already established masterpieces.

ENG 455 - Seminar- Milton and Paradise Lost

This seminar offers intensive study of John Milton’s masterpiece Paradise Lost.  Discussions will involve close analysis of individual lines-and indeed, individual words-and will examine the contexts of the text, from ancient traditions to the present.  Assignments will require researching the critical history of the most influential epic poem in English and considering the poem’s distinctive claims about humans, angels, devils, God, and nature in “the story of all things.”  This seminar is designed for juniors and seniors who hope to refine their advanced literary criticism; who hope to share their criticism in both orthodox and unorthodox forms, such as staging public performances of Milton’s poem; and who hope to reflect on big questions before graduation, that looming ritual of expulsion from Paradise.

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year and second year students require permission of the instructor.

ENG 462 - Seminar: A: Romantic Radicalism or B: The Long Eighteenth Century Gothic

Instructor
Vaz

For William Godwin, truth, if it exists, comes about in the “collision of mind with mind.”  In this seminar, we will investigate and interrogate how Romantic literature manifests this “collision” by creating and participating in the aesthetic, economic, and socio-political tectonic shifts of the period.  By doing so, we will examine how Romantic literature intersects with the richness and complexity of the period’s radical and revolutionary thought.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

462B The Long Eighteeth Century Gothic

lnstructor
Vaz

There’s nothing like reading books we’ve been told we ought not read.  That’s essentially the story of the Gothic during its inception.  Lambasted by contemporary critics as literature’s illegitimate and sinful child, gothic novels nonetheless sold like hotcakes, and the infection easily spread to poetry and drama.  In our seminar, we will trace this phenomenon in England from the 1760’s through the Romantic period to study its evolution from bastard child in the eighteenth century to literature worth of scholarship only in the last 30 years of the twentieth century.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.

ENG 472 - Seminar A: Gossip or B: Twenty-First-Century British Literature or C: Joyce/Nabokov

472A Gossip

Instructor
Fackler

Drawing on cultural studies and performance studies, this trans-historical and transnational course investigates the role gossip plays in literature, psychoanalysis, journalism, politics, television, film, and new media. The seminar foregrounds the imbrication of gossip and scandal with constructions of gender and sexuality.

This topic counts for the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor.
 

472B 21st Century British Literature

Instructor
Fackler

This course considers the transformation of the book as artifact and idea since the turn of the century. We will investigate the new, often experimental, narrative forms authors have developed as a response to such twenty-first-century pressures as globalization, terrorism, and genetic engineering. Questions for the seminar include: What are the overarching concerns for fiction in the wake of the postmodern and postcolonial moment? What kind of relationship can we expect between science and literature in the 21^st-century novel? Does contemporary science contribute to newly emergent structures of feeling that the novel might register? And if such structures call up concepts of the posthuman, how might they sit with the traditionally humanistic orientation of the novel as a broadly popular genre?  How does post-9/11 fiction respond to current fears of technological and/or natural annihilation? What are the factors determining pre-canonical status for the texts on this syllabus, and how can we understand the new circulation of global capital and cultural value? Students will consider the following concepts: virtual fiction; cloning, the post-human, and dystopian responses to the possibility of a genetically engineered future; alternative modes of narration; the figure of the artist manqué; ghostwriting as a narrative technique (and as a 21^st-century replacement for the omniscient narrator); detective fiction; fictions of terrorism and the politics of post-9/11 vulnerability; the new Bildungsroman; the author business, and the influence of book clubs and literary prizes such as the Man Booker. 
 

472C Joyce/Nabokov

Instructor
Kuzmanovich

Why a seminar on Joyce/Nabokov?   Like most seminars, this one requires intensive attention to the themes and techniques of  major writers.  These two long dead writers consists of their still having in print almost all the books they’ve written,  with those books provoking over 10,000 critical pieces just since 1963.  Joyce’s influence is acknowledged by Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Philip K. Dick, Umberto Eco, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Raymond Queneau, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard, and Derek Walcott while Martin Amis,  John Barth, Paul Bowles, Italo Calvino, Bobby Ann Mason, James Merrill, Thomas Pynchon, W.G. Sebald, Zadie Smith, Mark Strand,  Amy Tan, and Richard Wilbur mention Nabokov’s, and probably Joyce’s by way of Nabokov.

Method:  We will concentrate on (1) their styles (Joyce’s “High Modernist” and Nabokov’s supposed “post-modernist”/”metafictional”/”intertextual” one) since the grit in these men’s words has gotten under the skin of many a reader with an innovative critical approach; (2) their tendencies to generate their respective narrative authority from events in their own lives, especially their respective experiences of exile; (3) their depictions of Love in its various forms (including the loss of it); (4) the absenting presence of the big bogey, Death; and (5) the last member of that robust triumvirate, Art. 

Goals:   A foretaste of mature and thoughtful reading; confidence that you can do independent, original,  and careful scholarship on even the most challenging writing.

But is this class really for you?  If you believe that certain words or subjects should be off-limits to writers or readers, this is not the class for you.  Ulysses and Lolita each continue to sell well over 100,000 copies per year, yet they not only contain but also provoke language and situations which some students may find objectionable.  This is a class for those students who not only possess the already uncommon share of discipline, imagination, memory, and attention to details vouchsafed to most who choose Davidson, but who are also blessed with an ability to heft another’s words and deliver and withstand therapeutic non-rancorous badgering especially on the topics of  suspending disbelief in the transfigurative power of art and the (ir)relevance of contemporary critical theory. 

Texts: 0-14-024774-2 Joyce,  Dubliners; 670-0 180301; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as Young Man; 0-19-511029-3 Fargnoli: James Joyce A-Z 0-394-74312-1; Joyce: Ulysses, Gabler Edition;  0-679-72725-6 Nabokov, Gift; 1-883011-18-3 Novels and Memoirs; 1-883011-19-1 Novels 1955-1962 0-679-72997-6; Nabokov,  Stories  of Vladimir Nabokov; 052153643X; Connolly, The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov (Recommended Only); 0-679-72609-8 Nabokov: Strong Opinions (Recommended Only); 978-0-3-0-7-27189-1Nabokov, The Original of Laura (Recommended Only)

Prerequisites & Notes
Juniors and Seniors only. 

ENG 483 - Black Literary Theory (=AFR 383)

(Cross-listed with AFR 383)

This course will bring together readings both literary and critical/theoretical, beginning with Frantz Fanon’s seminal Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Taking Fanon as its point of departure, then, this course will necessarily turn to a discussion of the recent discourse on Afro-pessimism and black optimism, attempting to introduce students to issues and questions of race, race relations, anti-black racism, black sociality, the universality of whiteness, the fungibility of the black body, and of the vulnerability and precarity of black life; and together we will think more closely about how the complex and “unthinkable” histories of slavery, colonialism, and the Middle Passage, for examples, continue to challenge the representational limits and potentialities of traditional literary genres and modes of emplotment. In addition to Fanon, authors will include Orlando Patterson, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, Jared Sexton, and Fred Moten.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major.
Counts as a senior seminar and fulfills the Diversity requirement for the English major.
Counts as a literature elective for the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

ENG 486 - Navigating the Avant-Garde: Mina Loy & Her Nework

The emergence of the avant-garde in the early 20th century coincided with an explosion in magazines. Between 1885 and 1905 alone, 7500 new periodicals were established in the U. S., and thousands more in Great Britain. This seminar will explore the avant-garde as it circulated through magazines, ranging from experimental “little magazines” to “quality” monthlies and the mass-market glossies and pulps. Mina Loy’s “Brancusi’s Golden Bird” appeared in The Dial in 1922, the same year that T. S. Eliot published “The Waste Land” in the same journal and James Joyce’s Ulysses was serialized in The Little Review. By the 1920s, avant-garde writers had become celebrities, featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair.

The central node the seminar’s inquiry will be Mina Loy-an artist, writer, feminist, inventor, and entrepreneur who moved in the circles of Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, and migrated among metropolitan centers of avant-garde activity, including Paris, Florence, Rome, New York, London, and Berlin, from the 1910s to the 1950s. Since Loy played a role in almost every major avant-garde movement, we will explore and map the avant-garde networks she navigated, using magazines to chart lines of connection and influence.

Just as the avant-garde began with an explosion of new print media, you will enter the field of new digital media, operating your own Davidson Domain and using WordPress, Google Docs and Google Drive, as well as mapping and timeline tools-skills you can market in job, fellowship, and employment applications, along with your experience working on a team. The seminar is a collaborative research & methods course with readings drawn from the field of periodical studies. You will find and select many of primary source readings, collaborate on a major research project, and contribute to the expansion of the web site Index of Modernist Magazines: a select bibliography. In addition, your digital scholarship may be published on the scholarly website, Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde (mina-loy.com).

Prerequisites & Notes
Desire to study the past, eagerness to equip yourself for the future, willingness to take risks, and team spirit.

ENG 487 - Seminar: Legal Fiction

The principal claim of English 487 is that a trial is a text that can be read in much the same way that any other text can be read. Indeed, modern trials are in effect storytelling contests, with two competing “narrators” telling two versions of the same story to a captive audience. Understanding how, when, and to whom this story can be told takes some effort, however, because the language of trials is not the same as literary language and the conventions of legal storytelling are not literary conventions. Nevertheless, a great deal of contemporary literary theory offers genuine insight into the kinds of fictions that get constructed in a courtroom. This seminar tests a number of hypotheses about legal fictions, offers direct observation of some real trials in progress, and asks students to undertake research in the interdisciplinary areas where legal studies and literary studies overlap.
 

ENG 493 - Film Art

Film Art is a hands-on study of style and narration in the fiction film. That does not mean that you cannot make a documentary film for your final project.  Study and production are two very different processes.  We’ll proceed in this way:  After a reminder of the pre- and post- production processes, we’ll focus on individual directorial styles. We’ll also make a communal film to  learn that (most of the time) film is a collaborative art and to explore the capabilities and shortcomings of the available equipment (and talent). Then, each student  will be given a chance to write/adapt, direct, film, and edit a short film using digital video cameras and non-linear editing equipment.  The individual film need not be a fiction film.  It should, however, be your best work.   In the past, these were the films students submitted as their portfolio films for graduate school.  We’ll look at those films in light of the latest theories of narrative and the knowledge about cinema acquired from the film-maker’s end.  The final versions of all films will be burnt to DVDs and posted to VIMEO. If there are musicians among us, they will be given a chance to score a film and/or do sound design.

Satisfies a requirement in the English major and minor.
Satisifes a requirement in the Film & Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Limited to juniors and seniors.

ENG 494 - Seminar: A - Disability in Literature and Art; B - Multicultural Literature

Instructor
Fox

The literary tradition in English is rife with representation of disability. These representations are sometimes used metaphorically, as representations of extreme innocence or evil. Likewise, they might reduce the experience of the disability to a conquerable challenge, or to a fate worse than death. Disability Studies asks us to reframe our understanding of disability history, question socially defined categories of normalcy and ability, and understand and learn about the presence of “disability culture” and its widely diverse members are also using literature to tell their own stories in a vibrant new artistic tradition.  Literature is and has been obsessed with the disabled body, both as metaphor and actual subject – an extension of the degree to which disability has loomed in the larger societal imagination in one way or another across centuries.

Rather than trying to catalogue all the examples of disability in literature, this seminar seeks to use disability studies as a genesis point and theoretical framework through which to examine several core questions about disability, literature, and the problems and opportunities arising from the intersection of the two. We will:

• Reconsider representations of disability in literary, artistic, and cultural texts. We’ll ask how these are used as “narrative prosthesis.” How are such depictions used as literary devices? What beliefs do these images promote about disability?
• Examine how “disability” and “normalcy” are culturally constructed categories like race, gender, class, and sexuality. How does disability intersect with these other identity categories?
• Study contemporary writing, performance, and art from disability culture. This writing establishes history, explores identity, refutes/reclaims stereotypes, and promotes discourse within the disability community. We will look at genres ranging from memoir to fiction to performance to film.
• Consider how a “disability aesthetic” of literature might be conceived. How can disability contribute to the reconsideration of the processes and products of literary creation?

Therefore, while our course has a loose chronological frame, it’s more appropriate to think of it as organized conceptually. The survey here will be of the questions to which the intersection of disability and literature gives rise.  While this is a senior English seminar, disability studies is a very interdisciplinary field. Junior and senior students in other majors with an interest in the course topic are very welcome to join; the course does not presuppose a familiarity with disability studies.

Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Fulfills the diversity requirement for the English major. 
Satisfies a cultural diversity requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Community, and Equality Requirement.

494B Multicultural Literature

Instructor
Campbell

Beyond just teaching children letters, counting, and shames, children’s literature teaches individuals how to interact with one another based on their similarities and differences.  This seminar will explore how what is accepted and promoted as “appropriate” multicultural representation in literature for children and adolescent changes over time.  At a moment of intense American debates about immigration, demographic shifts, and marriage equality, we will explore issues of power and representation-who has the right to write, whose stories are worth telling, what version of those stories should one tell through focusing on literature for children, including picture books, stories, comics, and short novels.

Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Fulfills the Cultural Diversity requirement.
Fulfills the diversity requirement for the English major. 

Prerequisites & Notes
Juniors and seniors only.

ENG 495 - Senior Capstone Seminar

The senior capstone for English majors is a departure from our typical senior seminars, which typically focus on a specific author(s), critical field, theoretical approach, or creative genre, and aspire to yield near graduate-level work. Yet many of our majors have no immediate plans for graduate study and are more concerned with finding a job and figuring out how to live as adults in “the real world.” This capstone seminar is designed to help students build bridges between their academic study at Davidson and the lives they’d like to live after they graduate. Through student-directed reading, digital research and writing, collaborative inquiries, and consultations with alums, this seminar will help students set goals and develop a personal narrative and toolkit of practices to help achieve them. Culminating in a research project that uses digital tools and platforms to demonstrate the knowledge and skills students have gained during their college careers, the course will include substantial reflection on developing a sustainable life and finding a career path or direction for the near future.

Prerequisites & Notes
Not open to first-year students and sophomores without instructor’s permission.  

ENG 498 - Seminar: Senior Honors Research

ENG 499 - Seminar: Senior Honors Thesis

ENV 100 - Special Topic: TBD

The Environmental Studies Department will welcome a new faculty member in the environmental social sciences in the 2018-19 academic year.  As of this time, the instructor and topic of the course are still to be determined, but the course will count toward the social sciences track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.

ENV 120 - Introduction to Environmental Geology

A study of basic geologic principles and critical issues in environmental geology on a global scale. Topics to be covered can include: minerals, rock types and cycles, earthquakes and tectonics, volcanoes, mass wasting, stream systems, coastlines, soils, water resources, mineral and rock resources, fossil fuels, and climate change. Generally, the class will divide time between learning introductory geologic principles and applying those principles to understand environmental issues associated with geology.

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Natural Science requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies Laboratory Science requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 150 - Environmental Analysis with Econ Lens

The course will introduce students to thinking about interdisciplinary environmental issues as an economist does.  We will concentrate on a few economics themes and use topical issues to motivate and to illustrate interdisciplinary economic analyses.Note: The course does not earn economics credit and does not replace the Economics 101 prerequisite for any of the three Economics environmental courses (ECO 226, 235, or 236).  

Satisfies a major requirement in Environmental Studies

Satisfies a minor requirement in Environmental Studies

Satisfies the Liberal Studies Requirement

ENV 155 - Climate, Energy, and Society

Climate change is the most profound environmental problem facing human society and challenges the foundations of the global economy and energy system that relies on burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases. This course examines how economic, political, and cultural systems have produced global warming and how those same systems can and are being transformed to reduce carbon emissions and create resilient communities. Questions of justice across intersections of race, gender, class, and nationality are emphasized in understanding dynamics of power and privilege in how climate change was created and who will bear the costs and burdens of mitigation and adaption.

Fulfills social science track depth component credit in the environmental studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Sociology major.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 160 - Environmental Justice

This course introduces students to the concepts, contexts, and conflicts of environmental justice, both in the U.S. and globally.  After covering some general history and theoretical frameworks, the course is organized according to six cases studies (Love Canal, Hurricane Katrina, Hydro-Quebec, US migrant farmworkers, Bhopal, and Ogoniland).  Throughout this interdisciplinary course based in the environmental humanities, students will make connections among various kinds of information sources (literary, documentary, ecocritical, theoretical, ethical, historical, etc.).  For the final course project, students will create their own environmental justice case study, based on a case not covered in class, and with their choice of relevant literary text, documentary film, and background readings.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies minor

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement

Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement

ENV 170 - Social Science Perspectives on Environmental Justice

Poor and minority populations have historically borne the brunt of environmental inequalities in the United States, suffering disproportionately from the effects of pollution, dispossession of land, resource depletion, dangerous jobs, limited access to common resources, and exposure to environmental hazards. Paying particular attention to the ways that race, ethnicity, class, and gender have shaped the political and economic dimensions of environmental injustices, this course draws on the work of scholars and activists to examine the long history of environmental inequities in the United States, along with more recent political movements that seek to rectify environmental injustices.

Satisfies a requirement of the Sociology major.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 200 - Special Topic: TBD

The Environmental Studies Department will welcome a new faculty member in the environmental social sciences in the 2018-19 academic year.  As of this time, the instructor and topic of the course are still to be determined, but the course will count toward the social sciences track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.

ENV 201 - Environmental Science

Overview of the scientific concepts, principles, processes, and methodologies required to understand how ecosystems work. This knowledge will be applied to selected environmental problems to help students understand the scientific basis, estimate the risks associated, and evaluate alternative solutions for resolving and/or preventing them.  One laboratory meeting per week.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Natural Science requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies Laboratory Science requirement.

ENV 202 - Environmental Social Sciences

Overview of social science approaches to environmental issues, with problem-based and topical approaches to the study of interactions between society and the environment. This course teaches students to integrate concepts and the qualitative and quantitative methods of the social sciences (primarily anthropology, economics, geography, psychology, political science, and sociology) in interdisciplinary analyses of environmental issues.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

ENV 203 - Environmental Humanities

Overview of humanistic approaches to environmental issues, including perspectives from art, cultural studies, history, literature, philosophy, and religion.  This course emphasizes humanistic methodologies such as close reading and analysis of primary and secondary materials in both written and visual forms.

Satisfies a requirement for the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

ENV 210 - Introduction to Environmental Literature: Food Literature

This course is for Foodies, Ag Activists, Farm Fans, and anyone who is interested in literature about food from a variety of perspectives.  We’ll read fiction, poetry, and nonfiction about the pleasures of eating, the cultural and aesthetic significance of food, rural and urban agriculture, and food justice.  Field trips will include farm visits, and students will participate in hands-on, community-based assignments connected to the college’s Food and Sustainability project. 

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Humanities Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 220 - Climate Systems: Present and Past

The climate of the Earth is changing. It has always changed. It will continue to change. How do we assess the impact of humanity on climate? We need to understand how our Earth system works, now and in the past, if we expect to predict our climatic future. This course looks at the current climate system and explores the Earth archives that illuminate our climatic past.  Topics covered include: The Earth energy budget; the role of carbon dioxide and methane in short-term and long-term climate cycles; orbital cycles and the ice ages; Earth as a snowball; the Greenhouse Earth; ice cores and tree rings; oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems; and the impact of human activity on climate. Class discussions, demonstrations, and exercises provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and practice analytical techniques.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Satisfies a requirement in Liberal Studies

ENV 232 - Introduction to Environmental Health with Community-Based Learning (=HHV 232)

Students will apply biological, chemical and epidemiological content to environmental health case studies and community-based learning projects. This is an introductory course designed to expose students to different scientific disciplines within the context of environmental health.

Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Health and Human Values.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 232 may not be taken for credit after ENV 233.

ENV 233 - Introduction to Environmental Health with Laboratory-Based Learning (=HHV 233)

Students will apply biological, chemical and epidemiological content to environmental health case studies and laboratory projects. This is an introductory course designed to expose students to different scientific disciplines within the context of environmental health. ENV 233 may not be taken for credit after ENV 232.

Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Health and Human Values.
Satisfies the Natural Science requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 235 - The Ocean Environment

Covering 71% of the surface, yet mostly unexplored, the Earth’s oceans are a source of food, hurricanes, used as a wastebasket by human kind, and a great unknown in our climate future. This introductory course covers the formation of ocean basins; the composition and origin of seawater; currents, tides, and waves; the ocean-atmosphere connection; coastal processes; the deep-sea environment; productivity and resources; marine pollution; and the influence of oceans on climate. The class will focus on how oceanic systems work with class discussions, demonstrations, and exercises providing opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and practice analytical techniques.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies Liberal Studies requirement.

ENV 237 - The Interdisciplinary Use of Geographic Information

Geographic information is not bound to any particular way of knowing and can be used to visualize and  analyze spatial information of any type. This course will teach methods for using geographic information that will be applicable across the liberal arts. This course serves as an introduction to the ArcGIS software and will explore its abilities in a combination of inclass exploration, explanation, and exercises that teach the functionality of the software using interdisciplinary examples with a primary, but not exclusive focus, on environmental issues. For instance, we can visualize issues of environmental justice by mapping demographic data. Conservation issues can be better understood through mapping environmental data. Land use history can be explored through a blending of narrative, historical maps, and modern satellite imagery. In the later part of the course, we will spend time exploring and learning about some of the more interesting geostatistical tools available with the ArcGIS software. All skill levels with computers are welcome. Some comfort with PC-based software will be helpful at the start.

Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.
Counts as a methodology or elective course in the Environmental Studies major.
Satisfies the Mathematical and Quantitative Thought requirement.

ENV 240 - Environment and Ecology of India

This course introduces students to major environmental issues with both local and global impacts.  Through lectures, research, and field visits, students will analyze key questions of ecological integrity posed by the Earth Charter Commission, specifically the importance of biological diversity, best practices for environmental protection, methods to safeguard Earth’s regenerative capacities, and the study of ecological sustainability.  The course will give particular attention to sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies Liberal Studies requirement.
 

ENV 241 - Globalization, Sustainability, and the Environment

The global economy consumes large amounts of fossil fuels and natural resources creating a myriad of environmental problems, but many NGOs, international institutions, governments, and businesses think that a more ecologically sustainable form of economic development could resolve these environmental issues while enhancing community wellbeing. What is the potential for sustainable development? Who would benefit and who would bear the burdens? Using social science theories, this course investigates the socio-ecological impacts of contemporary capitalism across global supply networks and life cycles, and critically examines proposals for sustainable development through questions of power, democracy, and justice. 

Provides social science track depth component credit in the Environmental Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Sociology major.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 256 - Environmental History

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.

ENV 272 - Nutrient Cycles and Environment

In this course we will explore how the environment is shaped by the elements (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other rock-derived elements) and, in turn, how elements are shaped by life. We will consider these nutrient cycles across freshwater, terrestrial and marine ecosystems. A major theme for this course is the effect of human activity on global biogeochemical cycles and environmental change. The foundations for the course are lectures, readings from the scientific literature, discussions, and independent research projects.

Prerequisites & Notes
Prerequisites: ENV 201 or CHE 115 or instructor permission

ENV 273 - Art, Activism, and Environment

In this course students will explore environmental themes in American visual culture. Taking the art related to the environmental justice movement as a point of departure, students will be exposed to a broad range of visual material that offers insight into how humans have advocated for a wide range of political opinions through their painting, sculpture, memorials, historical markers, roadside and yard installations, printmaking, murals, and the natural environment. Students will gain a strong sense of how this visual material not only has been used as important tools in inspiring political action but also how these materials also serve as important “texts” in documenting and preserving less well-known environmental perspectives.  

Satisfies the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 275 - Urban Ecology

The world is becoming more and more urban, with over 80% of the US population and half of the world’s population living in cities. This trend (and the environmental problems it creates) will only increase throughout the 21st century, yet ecologists and sociologists are just beginning to understand humans as organisms that influence their environment. Cities are hubs of activity that influence the physical structure, climate, element and energy cycling, and plant and animal communities within the urban footprint. However, these urban environments are influential well beyond their perceived borders. Urban ecologists are expanding their focus from ecology in cities, where they studied urban plants and wildlife, to the ecology of cities, where they consider human-biological interactions with increasing their attention to the complex interplay among people, society, and environment. This course examines current developments in urban ecology and looks at the role it can play in planning and managing urban environments. We will use our campus as a “living laboratory” and apply these concepts to field observation, case studies, and research on urban sustainability.

Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Environmental Studies.
Satisfies a major requirement in Biology.

ENV 278 - Natural History

Natural history is the close observation and detailed recording of the natural world.  This course explores the history, culture, and artistic productions of natural history, with an emphasis on the United States.  In addition to studying natural history, students will also become natural historians by developing their own skills of close observation and detailed recording of a local natural environment, in writing, sketching, and specimen collecting.

Satisfies a requirement in the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 283 - Global Food Systems

Creating a sustainable world food system requires that we address both food security and sustainable food production in tandem, a clear case of intersecting challenges or “wicked” problems. Wicked problems are those issues that have so many relationships of causality and correlation that researchers and policy-makers sometimes do not know where to begin to address them. In this course, we will begin to investigate some of the ways we can understand and address the challenges of producing and provisioning food using the lens of sustainability.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 284 - Latinx and Environment (=LAS 284)

In this course, students will examine a broad range of Latinx environmental experiences across time and place in the United States.  Taking the environment as a key category of analysis, students will explore the ways that the natural and built environments shape, and are shaped by, Latinx culture.  Looking to important rural, urban, suburban, and wilderness sites across the United States, students will construct a nuanced “picture” of how Latinx environments have changes over time.  With our methodology placed squarely in historical and visual analysis, we will frequently engage interdisciplinary approaches to enhance our understanding of key issues including: labor, migration, public health, community and neighborhood building, transportation networks, natural resource development, education, and tourism.  Students will be exposed to a wide range of human expressions of place, such as art, literature, and activism, to gain a better understanding of how Latinxs have represented their environmental experiences.

Satisfies the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major.
Fulfills the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
 

ENV 295 - Independent Study

Under the direction of an ENV Core faculty member, the student learns environmental studies material through a structure that primarily resembles a typical course or through independent research at an introductory level.

ENV 300 - Special Topic: TBD

The Environmental Studies Department will welcome a new faculty member in the environmental social sciences in the 2018-19 academic year.  As of this time, the instructor and topic of the course are still to be determined, but the course will count toward the social sciences track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.

ENV 303 - Research Seminar in Food and Agriculture Studies

In this course, you will gain hands-on experience conducting social science research in the discipline of food and agriculture studies. Our research site is The Farm at Davidson College. Our goal is to design and implement a group study that measures the Farm holistically along the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic and social sustainability. As a student in this class, you will be held to high expectations. Not only will you be responsible for reading assigned materials, you will be expected to conduct yourself as a professional scholar responsible for developing research questions, collecting, analyzing, storing and presenting data in an ethical, confidential and transparent manner. Our course will culminate in a presentation of our findings to the Davidson College community. Students in this course are expected to already have a working knowledge of the Farm at Davidson College. Please contact the instructor if you would like to enroll in the course and need extra material to familiarize yourself with the Farm.

Satisfies a requirement in the social science track in the Environmental Studies major.
Satisfies the social science breath course in the Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary minor.

ENV 315 - Analytical Chemistry I (= CHE 220)

Topics in chemical equilibrium, electrochemistry, spectroscopy, chromatography, and nuclear chemistry, with applications in biological, environmental, forensic, archaeological, and consumer chemistry. Laboratory experiments include qualitative and quantitative analyses using volumetric, electrochemical, chromatographic, and spectroscopic methods.

Satisfies the Natural Science requirement.
Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.

ENV 330 - Surface Geology and Landforms

A detailed survey of processes in surface geology including weathering, soils, landslides, stream systems, glaciers, and climate as well as differences between these processes in various environments.  The class will split time between learning and discussion of geomorphic principles and practicing them in the field.  The class will be roughly based around the collection of new field data for an overarching class project.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in the Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 120 or ENV 201 or instructor permission.

ENV 335 - Soil Science

Understanding geologic landscapes and surficial processes requires a multidisciplinary understanding of soils.  This course will examine soils with a focus on soil-forming processes and morphology.  In the classroom, students will learn the terminology and concepts of soil genesis, soil taxonomy, and soil morphology.  These concepts will then be applied in the field so that students can learn to identify and interpret horizonation and morphological characteristics. 

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in the Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 120 or ENV 201 or instructor permission.

ENV 341 - Political Ecology

The interdisciplinary field of political ecology examines relationships between social and ecological systems to interrogate how politics and economics are shaped by nature and how nature is shaped by politics and economics. This course interrogates how political-economic processes drive environmental change and how conceptions of nonhuman nature are created through power and culture. The course introduces students to key theories in political ecology that explore ideas about capitalism, colonialism, and racism and investigates case studies of environmental issues and struggles over land and natural resources in the global South and North. This is a seminar designed for upper level students, but first-year students can contact instructor for permission.

Fulfills social science track depth component in the environmental studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 351 - Environmental Social Movements

This course traces how and why environmentalism emerged, particularly in the U.S., and how social movements for environmental protection have changed over time with different social and political-economic contexts. Highlighted are the frequently overlooked histories of environmental activism from people of color, immigrants, workers and labor unions, people in the Global South, and Indigenous communities. The course examines core questions about social movements and social change: How do people perceive socio-environmental problems? Why do people take and sustain political action? What strategies are successful and why does change happen? This course focuses on relationships between marginalized communities and those in power - the state, corporations and scientific experts - as well as dynamics of power and privilege between environmental organizations. Case studies of environmental movements will range from early conservation activism in the 1900s through contemporary protests around climate change and fossil fuels.

Satisfies a depth and breadth course in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Sociology major.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

ENV 351 - Special Topics in Environmental Studies

Special Topics in Environmental Studies

ENV 356 - Diversity & Extinction Analysis (= BIO 356)

This group investigation course focuses on the analysis of patterns of biodiversity and biodiversity loss. Students conduct literature reviews to compile data on biodiversity and/or extinction events to identify patterns of biodiversity, biodiversity function, and extinctions, with the goal of understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity variation and loss. An emphasis is placed on the analysis of biodiversity data and the development of novel analyses to address issues such as sampling effects, extinction bias, random extinction, and emergent properties of biodiversity. The course culminates with a group project that addresses student-driven questions via the application of analyses developed during the semester.

Counts as an elective in the Data Science interdisciplinary minor.
Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.

Prerequisites & Notes
Successful completion of BIO 112/114 and BIO 227 or 321 is required.  Completion of BIO 240 is recommended.

ENV 366 - Renew Natural Resources: Science and Policy (= BIO 366, ANT 382)

This interdisciplinary seminar course focuses on developing a scientific understanding of renewable natural resources such as fisheries and forests and how resources are then used, overused, managed, and conserved by humans.  The course primarily consider smodern methods of resource management, including adaptive and ecosystem-based management.  The course builds upon knowledge gained in the foundation courses of Anthropology, Biology, or Environmental Studies.  It addresses natural resource and environmental issues from ecosystem and policy perspectives.  Through case studies, readings, class discussions, and knowledge construction, students gain deep knowledge of ecosystem ecology and management policies and approaches.  Students then apply their knowledge to identify management principles that are consistent with a more holistic ecosystem approach and develop a case study of one natural resource and how it is managed.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural or Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor or the breadth requirement of the Humanities track.

ENV 367 - Ecotoxicology (= BIO 367)

Ecotoxicology is the science that examines the fate and effects of toxicants in and on ecological systems.  While toxicology examines effects at molecular, cell, and organism levels, effects at higher levels are not always predictable based on findings at lower levels. Ecotoxicology integrates effects at multiple levels of biological organization.

Satisfies depth or breadth course requirement in Natural Science Track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
Counts as an Applied Environmental Science course in the Natural Science track of the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary major.

Prerequisites & Notes
BIO 111 and 112 (or 113 and 114) or ENV 201 required and permission of the instructor required; CHE 115 recommended.

ENV 375 - Nutrient Cycles and the Environment

New course. Information coming soon.

ENV 385 - Group Investigation - Environmental Humanities

Satisfies the depth or breadth requirement in the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major.
Counts as an additional course in the environmental humanities in the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary minor.
 

TOPIC - Botanical Humanities
Instructor - Merrill

This Group Investigation in the Botanical Humanities will give students experience in conducting original archival research; analyzing literature, primary sources, and material culture; and writing a research article for a scholarly audience, all related to the study of amateur botanists and popular botany in the nineteenth-century US.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 203 or permission of the instructor

ENV 395 - Independent Research

ENV 401 - Interdisciplinary Capstone Seminar

This senior seminar encourages students from all three tracks within the major to collaborate in order to better understand an issue. The issue examined will vary through time and is up to the instructor. 

Satisfies Environmental Studies major requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Juniors who have completed 201, 202, and 203 are welcome to take the course provided there is space. 

Priority is given to seniors who will need the course to graduate.

ENV 495 - Independent Research

ENV 497 - Honors Research

ENV 498 - Environmental Studies Capstone

In collaboration with their capstone mentor, students will formally propose and carry out a project based on fieldwork and/or substantive library research in the area of the student’s depth component track - Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, or self-designed.  Projects will demonstrate an integration of the methods and theory appropriate to the student’s depth component by investigating a question or problem that is significant, situated, and original in its application within the context of Environmental Studies.

Satisfies major requirement in Environmental Studies.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 201, ENV 202, ENV 203. Offered in the Fall. 

ENV 499 - Environmental Studies Seminar (= ENV 401)

The goal of this seminar course is to integrate the depth and breadth components of the Environmental Studies major. Students will examine a special topic through an interdisciplinary lens, accounting for a variety of perspectives.

Prerequisites & Notes
ENV 498. For seniors only.

FMS 220 - Introduction to Film and Media Studies

An introduction to the history and analysis of screen media, with an emphasis on film (feature films, documentaries, animation, and experimental) together with an examination of ways cinematic techniques of storytelling do and do not find their ways into later media like television and video games. Lectures and discussions supplemented by theoretical readings and weekly screenings.

Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Required course for fulfilling the Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor.

FMS 311 - Advanced Filmmaking

New course. Information coming soon.

FMS 321 - Interactive Digital Narratives

A close study of selected video games using an interdisciplinary blend of methodologies culled from cultural studies, film and media studies theory, literary criticism, and history.

Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor Credit.
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
FMS 220 or ENG 293.

FMS 323 - Special Topics in Digital Media and Film

An intensive investigation of digital media and film production.  Screenings, discussions, and readings will explore the theory and practice of a selected cinematic tradition.  Significant production component will include videography, non- linear video editing, lighting, and sound recording.

Satisfies Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary Minor requirement.
Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
 

FMS 385 - Video Game Music (= MUS 385)

Historical, stylistic, and analytic study of video game music from its origins in the arcade games of the 1970s to the present. Emphases on close readings of music in relation to gameplay, and vice versa. Includes training in digital audio manipulation to create sound design and musical sequences.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Normally offered in alternate years; not offered in 2016-17.

FMS 421 - Seminar in Film and Media Studies: Horror Film

Horror films present visions, ideas, and arguments that probe and play with deeply rooted fears and anxieties of the Other, of the transgressive, and of ourselves. This seminar will survey significant horror films from the earliest moments of the genre (e.g., Nosferatu, 1922) through to contemporary examples (e.g., Get Out, 2017), with careful attention given to the historical development, rhetorical potency, and ideological significance of various cinematic elements, particularly cinematography, editing, sound, and music. Assignments will include readings and films, and graded projects will include scholarly writing responding to films and assigned readings as well as production exercises.

NOTE: This seminar will fulfill the 400-level capstone requirement for the FMS minor in 2019-20.

Prerequisites & Notes
FMS 220.

FRE 101 - Elementary French I

Introductory French course developing basic proficiency in the four skills: oral comprehension, speaking, writing, and reading. Requires participation in AT sessions twice a week.

Prerequisites & Notes
Normally, for students with no previous instruction in French. (Fall)

FRE 102 - Elementary French II

FRE 103 - Intensive Beginning French (2 credits)

FRE 201 - Intermediate French

Satisfies requirement in foreign language.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 102 or 103-104 at Davidson, or placement exam.

FRE 212 - Oral Expression, Listening Comprehension and Practical Phonetics

Discussion, continuing oral practice, and corrective pronunciation. Requires participation in weekly AT session.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 201, placement examination, or permission of the instructor. (Fall and Spring)

FRE 221 - Visions of the City

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 210 or above. (Not offered 2016-17.)

FRE 222 - Narrating the Self

In this course we will explore examples of fully-fledged autobiographies, as well as other versions of autobiographical writing or films. Students will be invited to consider how autobiographical elements are conveyed in each work and, more importantly, how they differ from the model exemplified by Rousseau’s Confessions. These differences will then be analyzed in their relation with pertinent social, cultural, and political circumstances of the period, as well as with questions of identity as they become important, particularly otherness in the colonial context, gender, and sexuality. Students will be continuously asked to reflect not simply on what is being said, but also how and why it is being said in that way. Although material will mostly be presented chronologically so that we may trace the development of autobiography and its offshoots, students will also be expected to make connections across time and space in ways that relate seemingly disparate figures, periods, works, and circumstances.

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 201 or above. 

FRE 224 - The Return in Francophone Literature

Is it possible to go home again?  Through poetry, novel, graphic novel, and film, we examine how francophone authors try to answer this question.  Readings and films from Césaire, Laferrière, Mabanckou, Teno, Gomis, Belkaïd, and Burton.

FRE 225 - Rich and Poor

FRE 226 - Mapping Desire

Desire is a passion that has driven men and women to build and destroy empires, and has thus been a topic and subject in French literature since medieval times. This course examines the various forms of desire, and maps the spaces and places in which it is expressed, from France to the confines of the colonial Empire and more recently the Francophone world.

Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory major and interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 201 or 212.
FRE 226 is cross-listed with FRE 326.  Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 326.

FRE 228 - Introduction to Francophone Literature Abroad

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

FRE 229 - Introduction to French and/or Francophone Literature Abroad

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

FRE 230 - Québec Through Film

An introduction to contemporary Québec society as portrayed in film, with a focus on questions of individual and collective identities.  Students will develop critical skills as readers of film as they examine feature films, documentaries, and animated short subjects.  Typical directors include Arcand, Dolan, Jutra, Pool and Vallée. 

Satisfies a requirement in the French and Francophone Studies major and minor.
Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 201 or FRE 212.
FRE 230 is dual-listed with FRE 360.  Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 360.

FRE 242 - Autobiographies, Journals, Diaries (=FRE 321)

Reading and discussion of first-person narratives from a variety of periods. Typical authors: Diderot, Guillerargues, Graffigny, Camus, Gide, Duras.

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
FRE 201 or FRE 212. Students who have completed FRE 220 or above must enroll in FRE 321.

FRE 260 - Contemporary France

FRE 287 - Studies in Civilization and Culture Abroad

FRE 288 - Studies in Civilization and Culture Abroad

FRE 295 - Independent Study for Non-Majors

Independent Study for Non-Majors

Prerequisites & Notes
Permission of instructor required.

FRE 295, 296, 297 - Independent Study for Non-Majors

FRE 313 - Advanced Grammar Review and Written Expression

Advanced work in written French.

Prerequisites & Notes
French 220 or above. (Spring)
 

FRE 320 - Husbands, Wives, and Lovers

FRE 321 - Autobiographies, Journals, Diaries (=FRE 242)

Reading and discussion of first-person narratives from a variety of periods. Typical authors: Diderot, Guillerargues, Graffigny, Camus, Gide, Duras.

Satisfies requirement in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric.

Prerequisites & Notes
Any course numbered French 220 or above, or permission of the instructor. (Spring)